


this is the language of love

by kaminagi



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M, fidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2018-04-04 04:01:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4124904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaminagi/pseuds/kaminagi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Words are so easily misconstrued and lost in translation, but Ariadne decides that maybe Russian is the new language of love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is the language of love

"You're leaving me," she says, dumbfounded. "For Eames."

"Sorry?" Arthur looks at her solemnly and takes her hands into his. "I love you."

"But... I can change," Ariadne pleads. "Give me a week!"

"I love you the way you are," he says. "Besides, even with the PASIV, you wouldn't be able to learn it within a week."

"You could teach me," she says hopefully. "You speak Russian, don't you?"

"It's passable," Arthur answers. "Eames is fluent. It'd be easier for the job if he came along. Might need a forger."

She pouts and shakes their hands up and down. "Your architect is terrible."

He kisses her forehead. "Yes, he is. He doesn't hold a candle to you and your brilliance."

"Which is why you need me," she adds stubbornly.

"Ah, I'm _not_ falling for that one." Arthur looks her right in the eye. "Aside from not knowing any words in Russian aside from 'do svidanya' and various food items-"

"Bolshoi! Damy i gospoda!"

"Ariadne, knowing how to say 'big' and 'ladies and gentlemen' isn't-"

"Let me come along?" she interrupts. "Pretty please?"

He might actually give in if she keeps this up, but he can't. "No. Not this time," he says firmly.

Ariadne's shoulders sag. She looks very disappointed. It doesn't help that he's not going to be able to call her or text her the entire time he's in Moscow.

"My exam isn't even until Saturday," she sulks.

"And today is Thursday. Get cracking."

She stares at him, her eyes glinting and she looks almost too adorable for him not to refuse. But if he looks away, Ariadne will sink her teeth into him and she'll get her way. He holds her gaze. She blinks.

"Fine," she says at last, seeing that he won't relent. "But you better send a postcard of St. Basil."

"Every day."

"And-" She takes a deep breath. "You better bring something ridiculously expensive back as a present, a box of ginger snaps, and we better have so much crazy sex as soon as you come back that you won't be able to leave the bedroom for three days."

"You sound very demanding." He laughs. "But I'd be more than happy to oblige."

She kisses him soundly. "You may leave me now. But hurry back."

"I'll be back before you know it."

 

 

This whole incident begins because, Ariadne decides, she can't speak or read or write in Russian. And the thing that makes her laugh and feel annoyed simultaneously because this whole incident begins with words that could easily be misconstrued as Arthur leaving her for another lover. (For those anticipating that story, this, alas, was entirely not the case.)

In all honesty, Ariadne doesn't really want to go on the job that badly, even if shared dreaming will never cease to amaze her with its lack of limitations. She wants her degree and the challenge of creating something concrete and real. The challenge of bringing a building to life that succeeds at creating the illusion of physics being defied.

What she hates is the idea of not being good enough. Underneath it all, Ariadne doesn't want to admit that she still has insecurities about her relationship with Arthur. But she wonders if the love of her lifelong dream of building something real against her infatuation with instant pure creation might be how she'll lose him.

And there's a bit of anger. Some at herself for daring to think that she's incompetent (so much that he doesn't want her to design something for him), for lacking faith in herself when Arthur has given that to her in spades. And for thinking that he won't come back. The only reason why she wants to go is so she can be with him. 

When she realizes that she's doodled all her Russian fantasies all over his moleskines, she has to lock them away in her desk. Ariadne won't be distracted just because she misses him that badly.

(Ariadne hopes he misses her at least as much as she misses him.)

Instead, she focuses on the exam she's supposed to take on Saturday, the last one she needs to take to finish her Master's degree. The one that's so important that going to Moscow and designing the most fantastic world with clouds shaped like colourful onion-shaped domes isn't a realistic thing to do.

(As soon as she's done the exam, she takes off for the library to find some books on learning Russian. There's some cursing because everything is in Cyrillic.)

 

 

Admittedly, it was a joke, demanding that he send postcards. So was the expensive gift and the ginger snaps (though she'd like some... the last time she had some was during a visit to London). Uh, not the sex though. Nope. They're totally going to do that.

She keeps all the postcards he sends her from Russia. The first one features St. Basil's Cathedral, as promised. She wonders if Arthur is trying to challenge her, to keep her from getting bored while he's gone because the bastard has written everything in _Russian_. And she's supposed to _thankful_ that he's sent a personally annotated Russian-English dictionary to her? Oh, Arthur, you are going to _pay_ for this.

All the cards are addressed to her with the same sequence of Cyrillic letters that she struggles to translate into Roman script. It takes three hours with the Russian-English dictionary and Google translate to figure out what the word is.

He calls her _dorogaya_. Dearest. Darling. Sweetheart. She flushes when she learns the word, feeling touched that he would actually be so affectionate with her given the way he can become distant so easily.

It's slow work and she's never needed more patience (to be patient, she recalls, does not mean to wait, but to be able to endure suffering), but sheer stubbornness ( _determination_ ) is on her side in trying to decipher words that might as well be hieroglyphics. But the cloud lifts, just a little, just enough, so she can figure out what he's saying in each card. Where he tells her all the reasons why he loves and misses her. 

(Eames will later mention that Arthur is bloody insane and sentimental for pining after her this way because seriously, that's like a literal "from Russia, with love.") 

He'll be back soon, she reminds herself with each postcard she translates.

A week before he's about to return, she finds out that she's passed her exam with flying colours. Ariadne kisses the postcard that she finds in the mail that afternoon.

Right over the spot where he's signed his name in his spiky staccato handwriting.

 _See you soon_ , it says. _Love you, my darling_.

 

 

To say their reunion had been enthusiastic would have been an understatement.

"Again?" she asks, breathlessly. 

He laughs, equally breathless. "I thought you were being metaphorical about the three days thing."

Ariadne giggles. "Not a chance."

"Well, give me some time to recover." Arthur begins kissing a sensitive spot on her neck, dabbed with the perfume he brought back (she never knew there were fragrances that cost over a thousand dollars). His mouth moves down to her collar bones and she's about to moan when he suddenly stops and lifts his head.

"Oh, damn, I forgot the ginger-"

When he pushes himself up, away from her, Ariadne grabs his neck and yanks him back down.

"Where," she growls, "do you think you're going?"

"You asked for-"

She pulls his unresisting mouth against hers. She breaks off the kiss a moment later.

"Here's your punishment for forgetting," she whispers against his lips. "We're not leaving this apartment for the rest of the week. And you're going to use that talented tongue of yours to teach me Russian. We can start with those postcards."

"I'm not that good."

"Lies. You had a Russian grandmother."

When her Russian hasn't improved after a week, Arthur sombrely suggests that she should probably punish him for another week. Her wicked little grin tells him she thinks it's a marvelous idea.

 

 

"Arthur?" 

Ariadne blinks at the tinny British-sounding voice on the phone she has taken from the nightstand. Arthur's face is buried against her neck.

"Nooooo..." she mumbles into the phone.

"Ah, darling," the voice says much too loudly for her liking. "Is Arthur blissfully fucked out next to you then?"

She pulls the phone away from her ear and stares at it for a moment. The room is completely dark and the glow from the screen of the phone hurts her eyes. She nudges Arthur.

"Arthur, are you blissfully fucked out next to me?" she asks without really thinking, her words slurring. There's the sound someone holding his laughter on the other side of the line.

Arthur makes a faint groan and blinks at her, like he's not sure he heard her correctly, before he grabs the phone. Ariadne wraps herself around him, freed of the obligation of dealing with Eames.

"Yes, I am," he grumbles. "So leave me alone."

"Now, now, darling, I'm sure you'd be very amenable to what I'm going to say. Yevtushenko was very impressed," the forger's voice says rather lightly. "You and me again for another job. He won't have anyone else."

Arthur gives the phone an unimpressed look. Ariadne can feel his fingers gently run through her hair.

"There's a girl here," he says slowly into the phone, "who asked me to send her postcards from Moscow and doesn't care that I forgot the ginger snaps."

"So-"

"She's amazing. Not leaving. Even if you're the only person I know who can speak Russian convincingly."

"But Arth-"

He hangs up, tossing the phone on the nightstand, and curls back around Ariadne, who has almost drifted off to sleep again.

"I get to kick Eames," Ariadne says sleepily, not quite hearing anything being said. "You're not supposed to leave me for him just because he knows Russian and I don't."

"Oh, I won't. Not for anything else either."

"Aren't you being sentimental?" she sighs and presses her cheek against his heart. There's a coy little smile on her face. "Tell it to me in Russian."

Her Russian has improved a little, but not that much.

"Nah... this is too important to get misunderstood," he murmurs. "I love you."

"Love you too, _dorogoy_."

**Author's Note:**

> Somebody asked @xaedificare to fill [this prompt](http://xaedificare.tumblr.com/post/89606403682/a-a-arthur-leaves-her-for-eames), which she gave an excellent reason why she would not. So I did. ~~And I am guessing it's not what the prompter wanted, but this is how I took it.~~


End file.
